Susan Taffe Reed, far left, sang in the chorus for the opera The Purchase of Manhattan in 2014. Photo Jesse Bruchac / Facebook
Brandon Ecoffey, the editor of the Lakota Country Times, blames his alma mater for hiring Susan Taffe Reed as the new director of the Native American Program at Dartmouth College despite her questionable claims of Native ancestry:
Dartmouth was a different world than the one I was used to. What I did know for sure was that the school had convinced me that the thriving Native American student population at the school was made up of students like me, ones who had come from the reservation or urban Native communities who I could relate to, and that when push came to shove that this community was large enough for us all to lean on. The reality was that the College was not made up, for the most part, of kids like me or the handful of others who were from reservations. During my freshman year orientation, college representatives would boast of the high number of Native students on campus and the high rates of graduation amongst them. What I quickly came to realize, however, was that the majority of students they referred to were the ones who opted to “check the box” on their admission papers: the one that asks you to self-identify your ethnicity. Now, I am not the identity police and I never pretend to be the authority on issues like this but I have always felt uncomfortable with the fact that so many of these students had no relationship with their people nor nations and that the reason they actually acknowledged their Native connection was to improve the likelihood of their admission to Dartmouth and success when applying for scholarships. Most of these students had no connection to their Native communities and likely took the place of kids from the reservation who had applied to Dartmouth. I wonder if Taffe Reed was one of these students during her college years. There are many out there who are angry at Reed, but the college is just as culpable. Dartmouth has seemingly failed to conduct its due diligence and once again Indian Country has had to call out another powerful institution.Get the Story:
Brandon Ecoffey: Dartmouth and Its Love Affair With Box-Checking Indians (Indian Country Today 9/22)
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